The Price of Red
by honeyinthelion
Summary: Updated chapter 2- Hannibal muses after putting Clarice to bed. More chapters will soon follow. Please review if you take the time to read: Much appreciated!
1. Chapter 1

**The Price of Red**

**By **

**honeyinthelion**

**Summary:** Hannibal must once again tend to his little starling upon coming home to find her weeping. Rated 'M' for later chapters as violence will be woven into the story line and some choice words will most likely be utilized in addition.

**_*Please note that I am a fanfic virgin: so do please try to be gentle with your reviews!*_**

**Disclaimer:**I cannot take credit for the sensational characters created by Thomas Harris that fall under the "Hannibal Lecter" series: however much I would like to do so.

Hannibal stepped into the spacious kitchen and placed the items purchased onto the counter. He began to unpack the provisions when suddenly, breaking the wafting silence of the house, were sobs resonating from the second floor.

Hannibal stopped and tensed his mouth. _Oh my little starling, why do you repine quite so?_

He padded lightly up the staircase of their home: being careful to not disturb the sound equilibrium. He utilized his ears to follow the sound waves as they transmitted through the house: sojourning his steps when he determined that the cries were coming from the bathroom ensuite to the master bedchamber.

_ Clarice, pregnant? _ He mused this notion over in his head, assuming this derivation as the root of her tears.

From their first night of intimacy on the Chesapeake shoreline, Clarice and Hannibal never used birth control. Yes, he knew that it was irresponsible to say the least and that the consequences would eventually come to this; as basic biology and chance did not favor the situation. Hannibal Lecter was just a man and he too, was not cognizant of such thoughts whenever they delved into sensual delights. However, whole-heartedly he always knew that if and when such an occasion would arise, he would jump into it with two feet rather willingly.

He rasped to the doorlightly and heard Clarice intake a sharp breath, almost as if she was unaware of his presence.

"Hannibal, is that you?" Her voice sounded hoarse and he concluded that she must have been crying for an extended portion of time.

"Clarice. What is wrong ma chère?" He paused: she spoke no words. He turned the knob of the door: locked.

"Just go away Hannibal!"

"No." He paused. "Please open the door Clarice. I need to see that everything is suffice." After hesitation and a deep sigh from the other side of the threshold, a small key appeared under the space of the door.

In truth, he expected to see Clarice curled up infant like on the cool tiles of the tiled floor with a positive pregnancy test lying close to her person. However, upon opening up the door, he was surprised to see a Clarice with black streaks down her cheeks and no pregnancy test in sight. She moved into the light.

"Clarice, What-"

"The hairstylist." She sobbed. "I went to a hairstylist today to get my hair back to it's original color, and," an encore in her sobs, "and I come out looking like THIS!"

Hannibal let his eyes wander over her hair: Far from the shade of blonde that was used to disguise her true identity after leaving Chesapeake Bay, there was now a color that could only be described as vibrant hue of cherry.

"Clarice," he said slowly, trying to formulate which words should be used in the situation, so that the further upsetting of her could be avoided.

"It is atrocious I know. Hannibal, I am so upset. My hair! My beautiful hair!" A new batch of tears began to sprout from her ducts: nonetheless harder than before.

"Clarice," he said, background music to her gasping and tears "while I am not inclined to say that the new hue pleases me immensely so, I will say that you, Clarice, are beautiful to I, no matter such trivial externalities." With this, her responses began to wane until all that was left was the sound of her sniffles. He pulled her to his body tightly so (it filled the negative spaces to his) and kissed her fastidiously upon the cheek.

"Mmmm, salty." He tasted her tears against his full lips. She let out a laugh that indicated how the organs of her thoracic cavity were still quivering due to such physiological responses in correlation to her perception of the situation at hand.

She looked over his shoulder to the hanging mirror and stared at her reflection: forehead crinkling in response.

"I have hooker hair." She felt Hannibal vibrate heartily against her body in amusement. Perhaps she thought, the consonance of the sentence in relation to the depth of the situation, was even too much for someone of his steely control. He pulled away and looked into her eyes of blue.

"Well Clarice, if more hookers resembled you, I shall shamelessly admit that I would have been more inclined to have hired them on past occasions." He smiled. He winked. And she smiled in appreciation.

"Now for you," he continued, his eyes still upon her visage, "I think that it would be beneficial for you to surrender to sleep: Lest a post-weeping headache should befall you. Do you need a sedative to accomplish that or do you render yourself able, Clarice?

"I think the sedative will help H. Can you please help me to bed?"

"Certainly mon chou d'amour." His eyes lapped over her Celtic skin as she led the way.


	2. Chapter 2

_**The Price of Red**_

_**By honeyinthelion**_

**Author's note:**I do implore your forgiveness in not being speedy in updating this piece: I have been terribly busy with my university studies and such. I do hope to update more often now that I am on winter break for a few weeks. Please enjoy and review. I revel in your feedback!

**Some points of interest about this chapter:**

The perfume described that Clarice is wearing is L'air de temps (I wanted to keep in tone with the originality of Thomas Harris's work). There are many other notes that make up the scent in entirety: these are just a few I have chosen from what I researched.

Freud's theory of castration is one that quite interesting in hindsight: the man fears castration of the phallus as it is seen as the center of masculine power in itself. Women cannot experience this fear due to the lack of a penis; Hence, the notion of penis envy. Women equate the hair to the phallus as the source of their power. The cutting of hair psychoanalytically, can be correlated to castration of the feminine kind.

* * *

Hannibal sat watching the hue of early evening wash over the Paris skyline from the bay window of the master bedroom. Tones of peach to yellow melted into one, even more delicately than the stylistic techniques of Monet and the sun was having one last breathe of the world before it went to bed.

"_-what I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water." _

The collection of words uttered under the fluorescent lights of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane wandered into his conscious. He pulled from his memory palace the vision of Clarice, the agent, sitting Indian style against the cement floor: cheeks flushed, her garments wet and disheveled from being caught in unfortunate weather.

_Exquisite._

The view he wanted then was quite different from the view he now held in his grasp day after day. Hannibal Lecter knew that the view he yearned for down in that dank dungeon, changed on that eventful evening in Memphis, with merely the stroke of a finger.

He looked over to her sleeping form on the bed. The gentle rising and falling of her chest indicated that she had finally fallen asleep, after much tossing and turning (the sedative did little to remedy her anxiety quickly). A grin stretched across his face. Yes, his view was lovelier than the spectacle of Florence as seen from Fiesole: more majestic than the Matterhorn rising up from the snowy terra firma.

She shifted slightly in the bed causing the sheets fall between her legs exposing one long, lithe leg. He sighed rather uncharacteristically. He truly did love her legs; and he loved them even more when they were taut, wrapped around his body. Alas, the most beautiful thing about Clarice, in Hannibal Lecter's opinion, was her hair. The brilliant copper shade captivated him quite so on her first venture down into the dungeon. It shone almost ethereal like against the harsh lights: giving her the appearance of a halo (at least in his mind anyways). That color. It signified passion, hate, love, and war all in one breath, like a kaleidoscope of the things she embodied.

_Much like her._

He recalled then, penning that letter to her which started the game of cat and mouse once more.

"_Did you ever think Clarice, why the philistines don't understand you? It's because you're the answer to Samson's riddle: You are the honey in the lion."_

They could never respect her, he knew. For she was like a paradox: while she was one thing, she was the opposite in the same sense. Clarice was neither black, nor white; but rather the shades of gray that fell between the color spectrum. She was unquantifiable like the universe when considered on a macro scale: and it frightened them to know that she was Adam while they were Eve.

_With the heart of a lion. Clarice, some of our stars are the same._

He rose from the chair, walking over to the bed. He settled down next to his Clarice and pulled her body to his, spooning her from behind. Her skin felt pleasantly warm against his body despite the early autumn breeze transfusing into the room by way of the open veranda doors. Her scent was heady to his olfactory system: base notes of sandalwood and ambergris, middle and top notes of orchid and bergamot. He insinuated his nose into the crevice of her neck and inhaled earnestly, putting the memory of this time and space in his memory palace.

Hannibal Lecter thought back to the assumptions he quickly drew to upon entering the house earlier this evening. How foolish he was to equate her tears with the presence of a fetus in her womb. If Clarice was with child he decreed, she would be happy, even if subconsciously.

The glow of sunset gave off rays that basked the room in tints of color. Clarice's hair, stood out like the garishness of the main drag of sin city. He spoke then, soft as his lovers touch: lest he should pull Clarice from her much needed rest:

_"And Delilah made him sleep on her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of Samson's head . . . and his strength went from him."_

Normally, Doctor Lecter did not find validity in psychology from a Freudian viewpoint. He felt that Freud, lacked insight as to how his own manifestations leaked into his proposed theories. Freud, Lecter thought, was a very sexually frustrated man. One point that he postulated as particularly interesting however, was Freud's notion of castration: particularly of the female kind.

If one were to analyze Clarice's response, to the abomination that was her hair, they could most likely derive the fact that her response was predictable, he felt, to say the least. Lecter believed that Clarice exhibited the classic response when confronted with a situation the aimed to strip her of her femininity: her hair was equitable to the phallus of a man. True, her hair had not been cut today, but in the process of changing the color to such a hue, the results were empirical to if it had been cut off entirely. Even through her years of trying to exist in a man's world, she never cut her hair: it was the one characteristic that set her apart and reminded her daily of the femininity that was beneath the generous cuts of her FBI attire. Perhaps she felt that in not cutting her locks (and keeping them naturally alluring), it was be the last thing holding her to the person she truly was, as opposed to the person that was given rise, when her father decided to surprise two burglars coming out the back of a drugstore many years ago.

He kissed the bridge of her nose then: not because she needed strength, but because he needed to be reminded that all this was not just a figment of his imagination. He silently hummed Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, relishing in the calmness of the immediate world around him. He dared not drift off to sleep, for soon he had to leave her side briefly for another situation that needed his attentions quite so.

The chiming of church bells resonated off the aging infrastructure of the city, signaling that night had come once more. Hannibal Lecter left the warm embrace of Clarice and set about garbing himself in black. He dug deep into her purse that was set on the vanity table and found the leather-bound day planner that he was searching for. He whipped through the pages hurriedly, finding the page needed. Once he satisfied himself with the appropriate information required, he went down stairs through the darkened surroundings, relying on his other senses as opposed to his sight. He pulled the door of the threshold behind him and headed out into the inky night with vendetta on his mind.


End file.
